Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook has blocked Dreamwidth

andrewducker.dreamwidth.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 196 posts

Re: Facebook has blocked Dreamwidth

#161

Post by drexlspivey »

corywatilo wrote: post #51

The same thing happened to my domain name about a month ago. (I also posted about it here.) This is happening more and more frequently, and the fact they block entire domains rather than a specific subdomain is really poor design. I finally got it unblocked, but only thanks to a former colleague (engineer) who now works at Facebook. If that didn't work, my next step was going to be filing a lawsuit, just to try to ge…

> If that didn't work, my next step was going to be filing a lawsuit, just to try to get their attention.

On what grounds? They are free to remove stuff from their website

Re: Facebook has blocked Dreamwidth

#162

Post by zorkian »

_ps6d wrote: post #116
zorkian wrote: post #102

Hi all! Co-owner of Dreamwidth here. Pretty cool to see my project hit the front page of HN, but definitely a bit of a /shrug moment on the subject itself. "Facebook gonna Facebook" I think is approximately how we feel about this. I know here on HN we're used to hearing stories about scrappy startups trying to carve a piece of the pie big enough to exit on, but that is pretty much the exact opposite of what Dreamwidt…

This might come off as a little rude, but it's sincere advice from someone who used to work in anti-spam (not at Facebook): I had a quick look through Dreamwidth's "latest" page ( https://www.dreamwidth.org/latest ) earlier today, and a major portion of the posts on there were blatant spam for things like credit card scams, "Work from home and make $1000/day!", and so on. You seem to be hosting a lot of spam, and tho…

You're definitely right -- this is an issue. I could very well believe that we tripped some FB spam measures.

We have a very manual anti-spam process right now that relies on humans to detect it and action it. We have a couple of very dedicated folks who end up looking every few hours, but it's not automated, and we don't have full timezone coverage.

It's definitely something I'd like to see us improve, but we've been focused on other projects (like switching from mid-90s HTML to a responsive design, which is a slow rewrite of the entire site). That said, if you have any advice on reasonably scalable ways of doing this in-house that don't involve sending our user content to a third party, I'd love to take any recommendations!

Feel free to email me, mark@dreamwidth.org, if you would rather do that. And if not, don't worry about it, I appreciate the comment anyway :)

Re: Facebook has blocked Dreamwidth

#163

Post by xb95 »

mrtksn wrote: post #108
zorkian wrote: post #102

Hi all! Co-owner of Dreamwidth here. Pretty cool to see my project hit the front page of HN, but definitely a bit of a /shrug moment on the subject itself. "Facebook gonna Facebook" I think is approximately how we feel about this. I know here on HN we're used to hearing stories about scrappy startups trying to carve a piece of the pie big enough to exit on, but that is pretty much the exact opposite of what Dreamwidt…

Super cool to have people with a mission(other than optimizing KPI for profit). It wasn’t obvious for me how to discover quality content though, any words on how to use this site or how to think about it? Do we need to know people beforehand that publish things that we want to follow?

There are a couple of discoverability mechanisms, but it really depends on what you're looking for.

Usually people follow the network -- find one person that's interesting, see who they talk to, and go from there.

Another approach is to see what "interests" are popular and click through to see who shares those/is active: https://www.dreamwidth.org/interests?view=popular

But, TBH, there's a lot of happenstance and serendipity (or are those the same).

Re: Facebook has blocked Dreamwidth

#164

Post by xb95 »

JoshuaZ wrote: post #113
zorkian wrote: post #102

Hi all! Co-owner of Dreamwidth here. Pretty cool to see my project hit the front page of HN, but definitely a bit of a /shrug moment on the subject itself. "Facebook gonna Facebook" I think is approximately how we feel about this. I know here on HN we're used to hearing stories about scrappy startups trying to carve a piece of the pie big enough to exit on, but that is pretty much the exact opposite of what Dreamwidt…

I really like the product you've made, and use it regularly. It might be helpful for your user base, and the project as a whole if one responded with a little more than a shrug. Facebook may be more willing to listen to you if you contact them then random users in getting this resolved.

Yeah, that's fair. We did follow up and I'm told we're unblocked now.

Re: Facebook has blocked Dreamwidth

#165

Post by jsnell »

mindslight wrote: post #148
jsnell wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now it has morphed into this idea that every site has the responsibility of content-policing their own users, lest what they publish be linked from spam. Not sure what you mean here. The problem Deimorz was bringing up wasn't just about users writing something, and spammers linking to it. It was that this site was being used to host the spam payloads . By spammers, not by actual users. And this is how a lot of the…

> this site was being used to host the spam payloads Calling these "spam payloads" is incorrect. The spam payloads are on Faceboot's servers. These are sites that are linked to by the spam, ostensibly for the purpose of funneling to whatever the spam is trying to market. Trying to police generic web pages, rather than the spam itself, seems like an exercise in futility given the basic philosophy of the Internet. > An…

In this hypothetical, the message that is posted on Facebook would just be a link + something innocent that makes people click through. Why? Because the easiest form of spam filtering works by looking at the content. Spamming via a link rather than directly gives this kind of content filtering little to work on.

A typical way to deal with this is to consider domain reputation somehow, if the content contains a link. E.g. trust links to old domains more than young ones. Or trust sites that with lots of back links more than ones with none.

So an old domain with user created content, a good reputation , but little moderation or abuse protection turns into a great place to host this data. Eventually links to the domain get flagged one too many times, and it gets blocked.

I agree that they are not sending spam in this scenario. But neither were the open smtp relays of old. They just passed it through, while allowing the spammers to leech off of the relay’s reputation.

(Just to be clear, I have no knowledge of what happened here in reality. So I don’t know that DW is hosting spam, nor that it was linked to from Facebook. This is just an example of why a domain blocklist might be a totally reasonable option.)

Re: Facebook has blocked Dreamwidth

#166

Post by kps »

jopsen wrote: post #40
andybak wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does the internet in general. It's still poor form to block entire platforms without warning.

Not really... I wouldn't be surprised if Facebook just blocks an entire domain when abuse report incidents hits some threshold. I'm not saying it's ideal, but I understand how it got this. DW should be on: https://publicsuffix.org/ And maybe FB moderation should consider the public suffix list. Another solution is to moderate content on your domain. Or require users have separate domains.

> DW should be on: https://publicsuffix.org/

If only there were some universally supported distributed cached database of domain properties.

Re: Facebook has blocked Dreamwidth

#167

Post by lostmyoldone »

kilo_bravo_3 wrote: post #123
spacebear wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2020, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Cloudflare are bigger gatekeepers of free speech than any government.

Please stop this. It cheapens speech and denigrates those ACTUALLY living without freedoms. Facebook, Google, Twitter, or any other online service for that matter controlling what is and is not said on their platform is not "gatekeeping" anything. Posting something on Facebook is not now, has never been, and will never be "free speech". No matter how much you want it to be.

While hyperbolic regarding the biggest, certainly not the most serious and acknowledging the important distinction caused by the censor being a government, or some other actor as per how severe consequences the censorship are likely to be, the retort that what is published on Facebook can never be free speech can only be true if you redefine what free speech is, and seems to me to be hyperbolic that it diminishes an otherwise reasonable objection regarding severity.

Facebook has almost certainly already removed what would be considered free speech according to the UN declaration of human rights, it's unlikely that none of the thousands of government critical posts it removed in India alone at the behest of the government could be considered free speech in the human rights sense.

If you're referring to free speech in the US, while generally agreed that companies acting on their own volition can not be seen as suppressing free speech, it is not impossible they could be considered a state actor through several means, including their censorship rules considered as influenced by government policy.

Since it's not impossible to rule out that some speech on Facebook might at some point be free speech in the US legal sense, and that much of it is free speech in the human rights sense, it is not entirely incorrect to talk about free speech on Facebook, but entirely incorrect as far as I can tell to claim it can never be.

Personally I think it's ethically problematic to require companies to give voice to everyone equally, but it's also somewhat problematic to allow complete freedom of what or who to reject when companies and their services become large enough to be an integral part of society's fabric, and perhaps the political debate.

In some way companies like Facebook has a similar function as asphalt, it simplifies communication greatly, but it's not really whether or not a piece of land is covered in asphalt made by a private or government entity that determines what is public or private. It's not who made the asphalt, and in several countries it's not even who owns then area under the asphalt, but rather how the covered place is used as determined by interpretation of law.

Twitter is probably more similar to a public place as it is, but Facebook's marketplaces, events, and groups nevertheless implies character in a direction that can be interpreted similarly.

Re: Facebook has blocked Dreamwidth

#168

Post by gamblor956 »

lucb1e wrote: post #111
goatinaboat wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there was a migration from livejournal to dreamwidth for reasons I don't fully remember Livejournal became associated with CP thinly disguised as fanfic. Think Snape and an underage Harry Potter kind of stuff. It was sold to the Russians after its value imploded because all the English-speaking normal users left. The Russian content on there now is as far as I know innocuous; that kind of fanfic is mainly a Western t…

I find it weird that drawn child porn is illegal actually. It's as if drawing murder or rape would be illegal. Don't get me wrong, I understand 100% the people that find the idea repulsive, would never want to accidentally see it, etc. But that's the same with gore / gruesome scenes: I really don't want to see that, either. That's not what makes something illegal. It might also depend on research into whether it make…

There is a significant amount of research showing that pedophiles viewing simulated pornography has adverse effects, including but not limited to increasing their appetite for consuming more of it.

Re: Facebook has blocked Dreamwidth

#169

Post by kilo_bravo_3 »

lostmyoldone wrote: post #167
kilo_bravo_3 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop this. It cheapens speech and denigrates those ACTUALLY living without freedoms. Facebook, Google, Twitter, or any other online service for that matter controlling what is and is not said on their platform is not "gatekeeping" anything. Posting something on Facebook is not now, has never been, and will never be "free speech". No matter how much you want it to be.

While hyperbolic regarding the biggest, certainly not the most serious and acknowledging the important distinction caused by the censor being a government, or some other actor as per how severe consequences the censorship are likely to be, the retort that what is published on Facebook can never be free speech can only be true if you redefine what free speech is, and seems to me to be hyperbolic that it diminishes an…

People love bringing up the UDHR. Normally I would be happy.

But they are misusing it. There are articles besides the 19th.

Tweeting content disagreeable with Twitter, Inc. cannot be a right under the UDHR because of Article 20.

Article 20

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

2. No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

"An association" doesn't mean an organized body like a club, political party, or union. It means any tangible or intangible connection of any type between two parties.

The twin freedoms of speech and association means a newspaper can't be forced (in civilized countries) to publish content against their will. The owners of the paper can't be forced into an association with ideas or speech that is not their own.

Same goes for Twitter. If Twitter wants to delete or prevent the dissemination of any tweet for any reason at any time-- that's their right.

If this was not true, then my local newspaper would be violating my rights for not publishing my letters to the editor. Are they?

Re: Facebook has blocked Dreamwidth

#170

Post by asveikau »

phyzome wrote: post #149
jsnell wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now it has morphed into this idea that every site has the responsibility of content-policing their own users, lest what they publish be linked from spam. Not sure what you mean here. The problem Deimorz was bringing up wasn't just about users writing something, and spammers linking to it. It was that this site was being used to host the spam payloads . By spammers, not by actual users. And this is how a lot of the…

Facebook users don't see those spam pages unless someone on Facebook sends a Facebook message to another Facebook user linking to them. That's where the spamming is happening.

Compromised accounts trying to sell bogus Ray-Bans and tagging some friends seems to be a pretty common scam on Facebook. I see it in my feed a couple of times a year.
Post reply on HN